Fishes, Monkeys & Peacocks, oh my!

We took advantage of the outrageously good weather on Saturday and took Bethany to the zoo. Grandma M. got to go along with us. It was a ton o' fun, as you can imagine!

First we went to the Children Zoo, to take advantage of it being free during the first hour of Zoo's opening. Bethany enjoyed the fishes!

She couldn't quite figure out the playground...but really who goes to the zoo for the playgrounds?

Next, Daddy wanted to visit the Monkey house. Bethany loved the Monkeys! Her little commentaries were pretty funny. She told us about them sitting, eating, sleeping & even remarked on their "poo."
On our way to find the entrance to the Bird House (which I always get confused at that portion of the zoo...) we found a male peacock strutting his stuff for the three hens around. The hens couldn't care less about his magnificent beauty. They were too busy finding some good grub around the area. The poor guy. I suggested to him that he lights some candles and plays some sweet music for the ladies. That should get them!!! At the end, Bethany got to ride her first carousel. She was a little tired and fussy at the point.
But once the ride got going, she was grinning ear-to-ear!

Finally, it was time to go home. We had a great day at the zoo! It is so much fun now that Bethany is learning her animals and really gets what she is seeing!

I need...

Can you figure out what she is saying...

Cory and I really have been working on our listening & critical thinking skills this past week or two. Bethany has started blurring all of these so-called-words together, expecting us to understand what the heck she is talking about. We have finally figured out what the little girl is trying to communicate to us. She used to say "noi" when she wanted something. Now it is, "I heheNee **insert object here****. " This all started with apples. "I hehehypal" We were wondering why she was thinking she was hyper. But after awhile, we realized she wanted apples. Now we are getting used to her blurred sentences. I did feel guilty for a while there not knowing what she was saying. We tell her to use her words instead of whining & when she was using her words...it wasn't making much of a difference as I didn't know what in blazes she was saying.

Good thing we are learning just as quickly as she is! :)

Big Girl!

Bethany really is emerging to become this big girl. I don't know when she stopped being my squishy, scrunchy baby and started to be this little toddler--but it happened. I need to find a way to stop all this growing up, before it is too late and she is off married somewhere!

Anyhow...while I work on that, I will go ahead and share some of the big girl pictures from the week.

She loves to watch the computer. Whether it is Sesame Street videos off of youtube (courtesy of our fast Internet) or just pictures of herself via the screen saver...she always wants to sit in the chair in front of the "deevee" (tv).

Bethany also likes to take care of Mommy and Daddy. Here she is feeding Daddy some veggie oil from her kitchen set. Yeah...veggie oil. I am sure you are just oozing with jealousy!

Putting the baby in the high chair came out of the blue on day. She really wanted to put the baby in the high chair and then she went and started to give the baby a book, toys from the kitchen set and she even shared her sippy with the baby. That is one lucky baby!

Okay...maybe it is Bethany's turn for the sippy now!

Playing Dr. & Going to the Dr.

Bethany has rediscovered her Elmo Doctor Kit she got for Christmas. She is loving it, although I imagine she doesn't know what each item represents in real life. She just cares about the characters on them. Glad to see Sesame Street has great Marketing!

Just chilling while listening to my ABC's.

Poor Bethany had to go to the Doctor today. She had a 103 fever! Fun times for us! Poor thing just hasn't been acting right. Turns out she has another ear infection. :-( She'll go through a small period of time where she is happy and playing & then something happens and she is just clingy and fussy. I am glad we took her to the doctor, 103 is pretty high in my book. Now she is on antibiotics & Cory will take off work with her. Poor thing seems to be getting sick a lot this year. We can't imagine what life will be like when the sickness gets to bounce between two little bambinos!

Just pray for us that the antibiotics kick in quickly!

Don't forget to watch the video in the post right below! She is pretty cute when she sings along with Cookie Monster!

C is For Cookie!

Here is Bethany singing along with Cookie Monster. It is pretty cute! :) Sorry for the YouTube video. I couldn't get the video to load on the blogger website. It took way too long! But this is totally worth a glance!

Up & Running!

Poor lil' Bethany has a nice runny nose the pass couple of days. She is such a neat kiddo. Seriously, she is really neat. She hates to have stuff on her hands and boogies on her face. So whenever she needs a tissue, she is always whining, "my nose, my nose."

Are all the boogies gone?

We also have Internet up & running at our house. That is pretty exciting. We no longer have to "borrow" other people's internet or deal with the dreaded dial-up. Bethany likes to help Daddy type on the computer. What a good helper! Since we have fast and reliable Internet, perhaps you can expect more posts...but don't hold your breath too long! ;-)

mmmKay!

Taking care of baby.

One of the cutest words that Bethany has started to say is Okay, but it comes out as "mmmkay." She'll use it all the time now.

"Bethany get your shoes."

"mmmkay, shooos on"

"Bethany lets go bye-bye"

"mmmkay"

"mmmkay my Baby Di-ter"

(translation: Okay, My baby needs a new diaper)

It is so cute seeing her strand her words together!

Other happenings in the house:

We run poor Bethany ragged. Here she is Saturday--dead tired. Poor thing didn't even flinch while I took off her coat. Who knew Pizza Hut was so wearing on a poor child!

22 1/2 weeks pregnant!

We also had our dr. appointment for Baby2 this week. Things are going well. The most important thing was my antibody levels. This month, they went down again! That is right. The antibody levels started off at level 8. This means, that once the technicians detect an antibody, they divide your blood cells in half to see if it is still present. This is level 2. Then they divided them again (level 4). Then again (level 8). Level 8 and above is considered "significant". For a few months, I've dropped down to Level 4. Well, this month I am at a level 2! That means the antibodies were present, but only stayed noticeable when the blood was divided in half. Beyond that, they couldn't be detected. So, that is pretty exciting news.

I also got to hear Baby2's heartbeat. Sounds pretty strong to me. Next month, I get to do the lovely glucose test. Yum-yum. I get to try out a new flavor: lemon-lime. Oh the joys of pregnancy! ;-) I have no fears...about the gestational diabetes, though. Things went so smoothly with Bethany!

Another Busy Week!

Life went back in full-swing this week. Boy, has it been a loooonnnnggg week!!!

Bethany finished up her sickness last Saturday, right when Cory started up. He was down for a couple of days last weekend. My turn to get sick came in Monday & Tuesday....just in the knick of time to interfere with work. I ended up needed to take a sick day Tuesday...the first day students came back. What a horrible day to have a sub. By Wednesday, all 3 & 1/2 Milli were feeling much better.

Bethany loves to take advantage of her nightly cuddles with Mommy, no matter where Mommy decides to plop down. ***side-note: plop is pretty accurate with this monster of a belly!***
Bethany continues to fine tune her puzzling skills. She has gotten pretty good & is really liking her puzzles. She is so smart (like you didn't know that already), that she will know when she has a piece to a different puzzle she will immediately discard the odd piece and find the pieces that go with what she is working on.
Coloring has also become a new hobby for little Bethany. She loves to get in her high chair and color. This is great for Mommy and Daddy, too! They get to get some paper work done while she is confined. Usually all school work, bills, etc. have to wait until little grabbing hands are down for the night. Color is only half the fun; Bethany also gets pretty occupied with just putting the crayons back into the box. Whatever it takes to amuse her, works for me!

Now we are ready for another full week of work and meetings and appointments and whatnots! We hope you had a good first non-holiday week back into the swing of things!

A Puzzled 19 Month Old!

Today is Bethany's 19 Month Anniversary of her Birthday!

Here are a couple glimpses of her puzzling day!

Why am I wearing Daddy's shirt?

"Daddy's shirt"

Don't you think I wear it better?

After owning these puzzles for about a month now, Bethany has figured out how to get the pieces into their respective areas. She has been working on that for a while. Today she just got up from the AquaDoodle, picked up a puzzle and started playing with them. I was amazed to see her able to get the pieces in with ease. For a while there, her theory was "If I push hard enough, it is bound to fit." It appears she has abandoned that theory and has gone into the rotate the image into the appropriate counterpart & all is good! :o)

Pathetic New Year!

I am sooo not in the mood, Mom!

Chillin' with Daddy. Notice the blanket on the chair, just in case of another "incident" and by "incident" I mean puke...lots and lots of puke!

Our poor lil' Bethany has fallen ill for the New Year. Our fun festivities began New Year's Eve, where literally one minute she is running around all cheerful & the next she is vomiting! This resulted in a sleepless night for the Milles family. While the rest of the world rang in the new year with a bang, we rang it in with a "Barf". At least her throwing up only lasted one evening. On New Years, the poor thing was running a fever all day. Today, Jan. 2, she has no fever and no vomit and no energy. She hasn't eaten much in the past 2 days and isn't really excited about the concept of eat ting. She will drink a little bit with prompting. We took her to the doctor today because she was so zombie-like, but the dr. said she just had a virus and to wait it out and keep pushing liquids. Poor Girl. At least it happened over break and we didn't have to do the whole song-and-dance to get a sub! ;-)

We hope your New Year got off to a better start than the Milles Family!

Fantastic Photoshoot!

Abbie sent us pictures from our latest photo shoot. Here is a sampling. It is hard to pick just a few to show case on the blog, there are so many good ones. You will need to visit this link to see the whole set. They are pretty cute. But really, what do you expect with such good models? Don't forget the password is: Milles

Chronicling Our Christmas Celebrations

We were blessed to have many opportunities to celebrate our Christmas with our Families. Follow along to hear of our celebrations and festivities.

Christmas Eve:

Bethany had fun playing with all the Milles family!
She especially like mimicking Uncle Derek. He can be pretty silly.

We left well past Bethany's bed time. She fell asleep immediately in the car. I tried to remove her hat. But she continually pulled it down over her eyes. Pretty Cute!

Christmas Day:

The day start off by opening the presents Santa left for Bethany at our house.

Once she saw the kitchen, she didn't have much interest in the presents.
Who can blame her. Someone needs to cook around here!

She wanted to put her Elmo ornament on the tree right away!

Here is Bethany with her stash of goods from Santa.

On to Grandma & Grandpa C's House. Actually, Bethany was so in love with her kitchen, she had a little Christmas Melt down when we tried to leave. "NO COAT" "NO Grandma!" "No Grandpa!" It was pretty cute as melt downs go. I am just glad that Santa hit the nail on the head with that kitchen!

Eventually we made it to Grandma's and Grandpa's for breakfast. As the presents were distributed, it was hard to miss Bethany's stack! Wow...that is a lot of stuff! Bethany had no interest in opening the presents. She wanted to cuddle Grandpa & to inspect the other stuff that was already opened! Crazy Girl! Eventually we "tricked" her to open her presents.

After a nice nap, Christmas Evening was already rockin' and rollin'! Grandma and Grandpa M., Uncle Derek & girlfriend Sarah, & Great Aunt Pam and Uncle Chris came over for dinner and good times. Again, I was more interested in my kitchen than all the new presents around the tree!

Seriously...she had NO interest in presents! It was pretty entertaining to listen to all of the ideas we had to come up with to hoodwink her to open up her gifts! :)

Here is a rare moment: Bethany sitting and opening a Leap Frog toy from Grandma!
She loves it!

Uncle Derek and girlfriend Sarah were a lot of fun to have a round. Sarah is here holding Bethany's new Elmo Quilt Cover. It is pretty cute!

Another one of Bethany's favorite gifts from Uncle Derek---her AquaDoodle. She loves it! :)

We hope everyone had a great Christmas with their families and friends. We are grateful for all of the good times and celebrations we were able to be a part of. Thanks to everyone for all the wonderful presents. We also just wanted to bring to the forefront of our minds the real reason for the season (pardon the cliche!). But it is, after all, Jesus's Birthday! It is important for us to take a moment to appreciate the significance of that event over all of the pretty shinies that Christmas now-a-days can distract us with.

Presents & Playtime!

I've already gotten to open a few Christmas presents early. This one is from my sitter, Jan. She is always nice to us. She gave me this cool barn with animals! Nice to know that I can hit the other kids...and I still get presents! :)

Here I am going down this mighty adventurous slide at McDonald's!
WEEEEEEeeeee!!!

I always like to proclaim, "But-Fly!" When I sit here! :)

An Ultracool Ultrasound!

click the sonograms for a larger view! :)

Here is Baby2, as we so affectionately call him/her. I went for my ultrasound on Wednesday. Baby2 has all of the necessary parts in the right places. We got to see the 2 arms, 2 legs, a large tummy, head, heart and brain. We didn't look for any distinguishing features to determine if Baby2 was a he or a she. Don't bother looking, the sonographer said she didn't go down there!!!! Anyway, we didn't find out for Bethany, so it is only fair we don't find out for Baby2. No one can claim we have favorites! :) The dr. did up my due date a couple of days. But really, when he did that with Bethany it didn't matter. She still popped out on the latest due date I was given. So I am not holding my breath for an early arrival. (Although, one is more than welcome! I get up to 6 weeks paid off...I'd like to get as much of that as possible! :) )

My blood antibody levels remain at the same level. The antibodies are still present, but not at the "significant" level they were at the beginning of my pregnancy. That is a relief. I will still go for my monthly blood tests before my dr. appointment just to be safe. I have been doing my best to instruct my body not to fight off Baby2. I have all my antibodies standing down! ;-) They can redeploy in June!

We Wish You a Merry D'oh-mas!

Bethany loves her "D'oh" Santa. She loves to sing and dance with him.

P.S. for some reason Blogger puts a second video image on the blog post. I can't get rid of it. So...either ignore it or enjoy our cutie-pie twice as much!

Christmas is Here! :-)

Our Tree is finally up!

Please ignore the lack of a top...I am searching for one like.
I'm either really picky...or all the stores have a very disappointing inventory!

Going in for a kiss!

The first few days the tree was up, Bethany was in awe. Especially since the tree rotates. She will chase "D'oh" around the tree. Then, she'll get stuck when "D'oh" goes to the back side of the tree. She loves to Kiss, talk to, and give drinks to the ornaments. What a loving girl~

Can't forget Elmo!
Bethany loves her Elmo stocking. Especially since it sings (rather loudly!)!!!

Sleepy, Socks, & Straws!

Straws! Bethany has finally mastered the straw. Really, who knew that was a hard concept for little kids. I mean, they have the sucking reflex instilled in them from birth. So, then why is a straw much more different than a sippy cup or bottle? Within the past month-and-a-half, she has figured it out. She was close for a long time, but often would give up sucking before the beverage made it all the way up the straw. Now that she is a master of all straws...she wants nothing but a straw. We went out and bought her a couple sippies that have straws instead of the traditional top. She's so proud of it! :)

Socks! On one of the many occasions that Bethany removed her socks, her daddy very "helpfully" put them back on her. She was really puzzled by them being on her hands. Here she is trying to get them back on her toes! What a cutie!

Sleepy! For a couple of evenings, Cory has caught Bethany and I snoozing away whenever he gets done doing whatever it is that he is doing (usually housework, laundry, dishes, papers, etc.). This time he sneakily took a picture of us sleeping. What a not-so-flattering picture it is, too, I might add! I think the problem is that I often ask Bethany if she is ready for night-night. She will then reply matter-of-factly, "No!" So, I take it she's not ready...plus, I am too lazy to go upstairs to put her away. So, then we both end up falling asleep downstairs. Nothing like fostering good bed-time habits young!